Although China is already producing several times more scientists and engineers than America from an already urbanised population of about the same size, it is still giving education a very high priority. Pressure for admission to its universities is enormous and schools and universities -- private and state -- are growing at a fast pace.

My own feeling is that, in about 20 years' time, China's economy will not only be snapping closely at America's heels but that the country will probably dominate America in both the human and the physical sciences because the best research brains of Europe and Asian will be going to China instead of America where they have been going for the last 70 years. Also, if Christian fundamentalism keeps on expanding in America and imposing further legislative barriers on scientific research, as it is already doing, then the world's brain drain to China will be joined by the best of America's home-grown scientists.

The following two items are about an imaginative tie-up between China and an English University. Firstly, a Chinese became the President of the University of Nottingham in England. This is something that occurred three years ago, the news of which passed me by at the time. The second is the unfolding of the second part of the plan whereby the University of Nottingham is setting up a campus in China.

Keith Hudson

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PROFESSOR YANG FUJIA, FIRST CHINESE PRESIDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

Han Rongliang

Yang Fujia, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor of Fudan University left Shanghai by air to take up the post of the fifth president of University of Nottingham in Britain.

"This is the first time in history for a famous British university, the Nottingham University to invite a Chinese educationist to be its president. The glory should be a pride shared by all our colleagues in the educational circle," said Chen Zhili, Minister of Education in a letter of congratulation on the event.

As learned, it is a very appropriate move for the University of Nottingham, which is on the way to internationalization to take up a Chinese who's able to help strengthen the international features as its president. This is released in a newsletter when the University made its announcement on the matter. Why the university executive committee recommended Prof. Yang Fujia to take up the post is because Prof. Yang is an outstanding academician who enjoys an international fame in the specialties he's working on.

Yang Fujia, aged 65, is a nuclear physicist. Graduated from the Physics Department of Fudan University in 1958 he has ever been Director of the Department of Atomic Sciences and of the Research Institute of Modern Physics, Dean of the Institute for Post-graduate Studies, Vice-president and President of Fudan University. Now he is the Director of Shanghai Institute for Nuclear Researches under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

After Prof. Yang's assuming the presidency of University of Nottingham the British Queen will give him an audience in the Buckingham Palace. In an interview with the reporter Prof. Yang stressed time and again that his engagement as the president of University of Nottingham is far beyond a thing of his personal honor, but an expression of a raised status enjoyed by the Chinese science and education in the nowadays world. He said he would play an active role in pushing ahead the exchanges between China and Britain in the fields of education and sciences.

People's Daily Online -- 2002

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UK UNIVERSITY TO OPEN IN CHINA

Sean Coughlan

The University of Nottingham is to open a campus in China. This £40m project, agreed with the Chinese education authorities, will be the first time a UK university has opened a purpose-built campus in China. The first Chinese students are expected to start courses in September -- with the start-up academic staff being deployed from the UK.

The university says "internationalisation" is an important part of higher education's future. The university, which will be known as University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China, will be the latest stage in higher education's expansion into a global market.

Exporting education

Instead of only providing courses and degrees within their own country -- universities are increasingly looking to export their "brand" overseas, where there is demand for UK--endorsed university degrees. Nottingham's new campus is to be opened in Ningbo, an historic city in the province of Zhejiang on China's eastern coast.

The setting up of the campus is a partnership with Chinese education authorities -- but the degrees will be awarded by Nottingham. "At our campus in China the students will graduate with University of Nottingham degrees of the same quality and standard as students graduating from here in the UK," says Douglas Tallack, the university's pro-vice chancellor for internationalisation.

"Competition in higher education is now international," he says. By staking a claim in China, Professor Tallack says that the university will be "taken seriously" when it comes to establishing links in the country for business and research. China will be an important market for higher education -- as well as business -- and Nottingham is seeking to gain an early foothold.

International profile

Professor Tallack says that between 2004 and 2008, it is expected that about 4,000 students will attend the new university. At first, the university will teach arts and social science subjects. Teaching will be in English -- and supplementing staff from Nottingham will be locally and internationally-recruited academics.

The cost of land and construction, to be completed for September 2005, will be funded by the university's Chinese partner -- the Wanli educational group. This organisation has been charged by the Chinese government with finding ways to revitalise state education. Nottingham University says that the cost of the venture will be covered by fees from students at the new university -- and that any surpluses will be re-invested.

Human rights

Professor Tallack says the project is a "two-way benefit", opening up opportunities for research and other exchanges between academics and students in China and the United Kingdom. Nottingham University already has a campus in Malaysia -- and Professor Tallack says that if other opportunities arose, they would consider developing universities elsewhere.

Addressing human rights concerns, the university says "We shall extend to our China campus our approach of working with Chinese institutions, presenting students with a balanced viewpoint, and teaching in different ways (with more independent thinking). We think this will go well with reform and modernisation in China itself."

The vice-president of the Ningbo campus will be Professor Ian Gow, formerly director of Nottingham University Business School.

BBC News Online -- 23 April 2003

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